I composed Ellipsen, a trio for clarinet, violin and piano, on the basis of a cycle of poems by Roland Jooris (born in 1936 in Wetteren, Belgium). In his poems, Jooris expresses his feelings when viewing works of visual art. I tried to do much the same thing by (re)translating into musical form my own reactions after reading his astonishing work. With the agreement of the poet, I used the titles of six of the poems for the six movements of the piece. The number of instruments varies from one movement to the next, in keeping with the contrasts between the poems: OVAAL clarinet solo EI duet violin and piano SAENREDAM trio FAGOT duet clarinet and piano ETUDE violin solo IMPROMPTU trio This work is not just a setting into music of the poems: « Ellipsen » can be appreciated as an autonomous work, as pure music. However, listening to the music after having read the poems clarifies the connection between the two modes of artistic expression. Ellipsen is composed on an original scale that is the result of the aligning of the overtones (harmonic series): it uses a limited number of tempered sounds united with untempered sounds, played only by the violin and the clarinet. For this reason, the piano does not need special tuning. Jean-Pierre Deleuze